All These Questions

I have all these questions that keep popping up every time I hear some politician comment on the need for "get tough" policies that keep folks incarcerated for long stretches.

Here I go:

1. What’s the real cost for locking someone up? Yeah, I know you claim it costs $27,000+ a year to keep someone behind bars; but that person also isn't working and paying taxes; and, if that person has kids, chances are that child is living under the poverty level and getting government aid; even worse, that child's likelihood of ending up in here dramatically increases. So, what is the real cost to society?
   
   
2. You talk a lot about Virginia's low recidivism rate, yet every independent study conducted on state recidivism rates always notes that Virginia's approach to collection is different from the rest of the countries. And, as low as it is, it hasn't changed a bit since parole was abolished back in 1994. It's still a little below 30%. The difference is, back in '94 there were 9500 inmates; today there are about 40,000. And today, Virginia spends over $1.1 billion on corrections even though there isn't a whole lot of correcting going on. Programs for drug and alcohol treatment are a joke. Mental health treatment largely consists of high doses of antipsychotic meds. Safety? Go to a higher level and see the number of stabbings, rapes, assaults. Drugs are everywhere in the system; officers and staff are walked off every day for fraternizing with offenders. No one is held accountable--wardens and security chiefs keep their jobs; money gets flushed every day. There is no one who is held responsible. Rules--such as daily schedules and policies--are routinely ignored by the officers while offenders are nitpicked over silly housing policies which breeds further contempt and distrust. We always hear how low the recidivism rate is; yet most adult offenders started out in the Virginia juvenile system-- how effective is the Department of Corrections really?
   

3. Why is it that DOC signed a consent order and settled a class action law suit brought by 5 women at Fluvanna over the poor medical care in the system, yet the same problems that existed there exist at every facility and still DOC fails to take control over the medical care? Hepatitis C positive inmates are daily denied access to treatment; injuries requiring surgery are put off; specialist’s orders are ignored by contract doctors who know that their private company's profit margin will only exist if treatment is denied. And still, DOC does not comply with the order of the Federal Court.
   
   
4. How much does GTL, Keefe, and the other corrections- industrial corporations spend on lobbying Virginia politicians to keep their contracts in place and how much does Virginia receive as "commissions" under those contracts? How much does Virginia spend each year in legal fees and expenses when DOC loses cases for violations of inmate rights?
   
   
5. Why do states--mostly under the control of Republicans--that have implemented prison reform with early release show better results in their DOC's than Virginia?
   

Yeah, I have a lot of questions I'd love to ask those in charge. Problem is, they don't want to discuss the issues, nor do they want to come out here and see what takes place behind bars. But hey, all I've got is time. So every fight, every OD, every wasted dollar, I write down. And one of these days, someone will listen. Prisons are needed; but the way things operate in Virginia does nothing to alleviate crime, nor prevent a person from coming back. And the sad fact is, most in here have neither the education, the job skills, or the hope to make it on the outside without changes. 

Education, Not Incarceration

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN FEBRUARY, 2015.

 

            “Every dollar spent on prison education saves five dollars in corrections expenditures.” That was the conclusion drawn in a 2014 released meta-analysis study conducted by the Rand Corporation. Sentencing a person to prison does more to undermine one’s employability than any other factor. Is it any wonder 65% of released offenders re-offend within 3 years. Inmates are twice as likely to lack a high school education as the general population.

            In the words of Vivian D. Nixon, Executive director of College and Community fellowship in New York,

            “Every felony conviction … quite literally results in a life sentence.”

            Education – and only education breaks the cycle of repeat offenses. Earn a bachelor’s degree in prison and the recidivism rate drops to 5.6%. Earn a master’s and the rate is less than 1%. No less a conservative spokesman than former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the following:

            “Prisoners should be provided free education in order to reduce crime and recidivism.”

            And yet education – particularly higher-educated – is the red-headed stepchild of the prison system. At this facility every man in our college program pays his own way – tuition – the same rate charged to students on the street. No other inmates in Virginia pay for the “privilege” of improving their chances for success on the street. Not even one state dollar is invested in the college program here, yet millions annually go into “re-entry” programs with no provable record of success. The commonwealth spent millions on a “software” package – “Compass,” a 120 plus question/survey to determine an offenders risk of re-offending. Meanwhile a nationally recognized program for offenders our “Campus within Walls” program is treated with both benign neglect and outright contempt by those in charge here.

            The “dedicated housing unit,” a dorm specifically mandated for use by college participants, is the fullest building on the compound. While bed space sits empty in every other building here, those in charge continue to use beds in this building as a dumping zone. Recent surveys of our students indicated the noise and distractions from the non-college residents are the single greatest impediment to success in class.

            Makes you wonder, or maybe it doesn’t. Education, a college education, is the ticket out. What does that tell you about the goals of those in charge?

            It is time for the Department of Corrections to get behind the one program that will reduce recidivism and that will give these men a fighting chance of success after release.

 

DOC Loses, Again and Again

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN FEBRUARY, 2015.

 

            Betting against DOC in court is becoming a no-brainer. The folks in Richmond keep defending – and losing inmate suits. The cost is borne by the taxpayers.

            So, an inmate in Virginia’s maximum security facility, Red Onion, asks to participate in the Muslim fasting period of Ramadan. Officers go into his cell and search, looking for “physical items in his possession to prove his faith.” The inmate has a Koran and a prayer rug, but nothing else. DOC denies the inmate's participation in the fasting period. He filed suit.

            Ruling against the prison, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that DOC policy was unconstitutional.

            “The First Amendment demands a more reasoned approach, even within the difficult confines of a prison environment.” The court found that indicators of an inmate’s sincere religious beliefs go beyond physical possession of religious items. The court then awarded the inmate $3.795 (his filing and copying costs to bring this prose suit).

            Like the inmate medical care suit (inmates at the Fluvanna Women’s prison), this suit should cause DOC to change policy at every institution. But it doesn’t. Inmates continue to file grievances over bad medical care and denial of their rights to practice their religion. The grievances are filed, suits go forward, and taxpayers pay. No one in the administration is called to answer for it. Sounds crazy doesn’t it?

            Here’s a word you don’t hear too often involving Virginia’s Department of Corrections: Accountability. It’s time DOC is held to the same standard those of us doing time are held to. DOC needs to be accountable.

 

Hey Mr. DOC Director

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY, 2015.

 

            Dear Sir:

            You spend a good deal of time telling the public how important re-entry is. DOC spends millions on “cognitive community” buildings run by “Evidence-Based” management techniques. Such great terminology that – in reality – means absolutely nothing to real success after prison. How much do you really know about what goes on in your prisons?

            Evidence-based failure, that’s it in a nutshell. Mr. Director, you spend millions on multiple layers of staff who spend their time trying to persuade others that their jobs really matter. Have you seen the flow-chart posted in the buildings that detail who offenders need to address questions to?

            Counselors report to “unit managers.” Unit managers’ report to the “Evidence-based manager,” who puts childish rules in place (“no sitting in your chairs during quiet time”) that have nothing to do with preparing men for life in the real world. That’s what your “E-B” program is giving you: silly, inane rules that just piss the men off and do nothing to promote leaving and never re-offending.

            As if that wasn’t bad enough, you put people in positions of responsibility who are anti-education, anti-college especially. This facility has a nationally recognized college program which has been written about by an eminent Harvard researcher. All the students pay their own way (no other DOC program is self-funded). The students reside together, study together, and rec and eat together creating a community. This seems like a good thing, right?

            Why then does your security chief scoff openly about the program? Why are new arrivals constantly dumped in the open bunks while other buildings have empty space? Why does your Evidenced-Based manager get away with saying there should be no college building?

            You’re in charge; do something. You know the Harvard researcher and you know what the research proves: earning a college degree while incarcerated is the most successful tool to reducing recidivism. Tell your staff, “Get on board or get a different line of work.” Become an advocate, not an adversary.

            Inmates don’t need “words” of the day and silly rules; they need real job skills, real educational opportunities, real interview practice. That’s what the “evidence” proves, not the crap that’s being pedaled out here.

 

Prison Profiteers

The other evening a poster went up from JPay, announcing the formation of a not-for-profit foundation, "Creative Corrections Education Foundation”. The poster states that 100,000s of children have a parent behind bars. "For the cost of a candy bar" an offender can make a $0.50 donation each month to the foundation in the hopes that $3 million will be raised to create scholarships for children of the incarcerated. How noble of JPay. Meanwhile, JPay gouges inmates' families for the "privilege" of sending money to their loved ones behind bars. JPay makes millions off sweetheart contracts negotiated with state DOC staff; they spend millions each election cycle to "buy" influence; and the state reps are more than happy to oblige. Sorry, but Mr. Smith ain't going to Washington anymore. Politics is about corrupt money influencing policy.

Were it only JPay doing this, you could write it off (no pun intended) to the state trying to simplify a process that--like everything else in prison-is long on time consumption and short on results. But it isn't just JPay. There is a prison-industrial complex that makes billions off the taxpayers of this state, this country and lines the pockets of politicians and CEOs alike. If the state believes in prison then so be it; but, don't outsource a fundamental government function. The loss of freedom is as massive and intrusive a power that the government has; they should not be allowed to sell that function off to the highest bidder for private profit.

Who is harmed by this prison profiteering? All inmates and their families, which, as we know, are mostly poor, uneducated people, people without a voice, people for whom the American dream is but a false myth.

Why does the state contract out phone service and charge inmates and their families more than a 20-minute call to an overseas location? Why does the state sign such a contract and then get a "commission" (a fancy word for kickback) on the contract? Why do we claim that we believe in the free market except where it relates to services for inmates and their families?

Funny questions to ask. Here are a few more: If it costs $27,000 a year to house and hold an inmate, how much of that is really cost attributable to the inmate? Answer, less than 5%. The rest is to support a VA DOC bureaucracy that has over 15,000 employees with salary, benefits, etc. Think those people are in favor of prison reform?

What does the state do with all the money it gets from contract commissions? It certainly isn't used for drug and alcohol programs; at the last general assembly, a state rep proposed that the phone commission be used specifically to fund prison re-entry and education programs. That bill was tabled. Interestingly, GTL-the phone profiteer--has a full time lobbyist at work at the Virginia General Assembly. Can you guess what GTL thought of the bill?

Prison profiteering is, besides being immoral, a waste of taxpayer money. It is wrong. Where is "Mr. Smith" when we need him? He’s probably on a golf junket with some prison contractor!

The First Casualty

            Aeschylus, the great Greek Philosopher, wrote, “Truth is the first casualty of war.” (words to think about as our nation begins yet another military action). In truth, “truth” is the first casualty of all our follies: broken/failed relationships; dishonesty in business and government; failure in corrections. So often, it is easier to lie and distort and to imprison the truth from the light of day than to admit our failures – and the active role we play in them.

            The Virginia Department of Corrections, a behemoth of money and manpower, is broken. That’s the truth. It is as clear as the blue sky on a crisp fall day. Yet, the politicians in Richmond won’t say it because to do so would be to admit that a few have gotten rich off contracts and sweetheart deals; that corruption permeates the departments core; and that prison neither makes society safer nor rehabilitates the offenders it holds. DOC is a failure of monumental proportions. And, when cast into the light of truth, when exposed for what it really is, you can see the waste in money and lives.

1.     There is no statistical correlation between harsh sentencing and crime rates, between abolishment of parole and recidivism. Crime rates have nothing to do with, “tough on crime” sentencing. In fact, in states where there is more liberal use of alternative sentencing (i.e. not prison) and community-based corrections (i.e. parole and probation) crime rates have dropped significantly more than in Virginia.    

       

2.     All harsh sentencing does is sends more people to prison, for longer sentences, at greatly increasing cost. It doesn’t make Virginia any safer. Worse, in “people issues” it actually harms communities. Harsh sentencing creates an attitude of victimization among many offenders. You send a small-time drug user or nonviolent larceny convict to prison and he (or she) is subjected to violence, humiliation, and arbitrary behavior on the part of some guards, and you create an angry inmate, a person who believes he is being treated unfairly.

There are over 100,000 children in Virginia who have a parent in prison. Statistically, those children are less well off economically and have lower education levels. They also are more likely to find themselves on the wrong side of the law. There is a generational component to prison. You send a father to prison and there is a statistically significant likelihood that one of his children will end up there as well.

3.     Corrections uses sweetheart contracts to prison/industrial corporations which, in turn, pay huge dollars to Virginia lobbyists and candidates’ campaigns in even sweeter deals. The state outsources major portions of its corrections apparatus at ever increasing cost to the taxpayers with worse oversight and results.

For example, DOC no longer provides medical care for the incarcerated. That process has been contracted out to medical companies who are paid millions of dollars for “primary” care of inmates. If specialists are needed, those costs are still paid by taxpayers. Forget the moral argument, namely should government be able to take a person’s liberty away by incarceration, then outsource that function; instead, look at the pure dollars and cents. It costs the state more to have private contractors provide medical care than to do it itself.

            These contracts are all big dollar and add to the huge, billion dollar plus expenditures DOC makes every year. They also lead to multitudes of lawsuits, which the state must defend.

            Medical care in prison is poor at best. There is no “Hippocratic Oath” (“do no harm”) at play in here. No, it’s “churn and burn” to make a buck. Then, when the lawsuits begin to mount, the contractor bails out. Think I’m kidding? Ask the women inmates at Fluvanna who successfully sued in a class action suit over the lack of adequate medical care.

4.     Prisons – individually and as a totality – are corrupt. They say it’s all about public safety; they lie. The public isn’t safer with nearly 40,000 people jammed into Virginia’s prisons. Every day in here lives are wasted. The state spends millions to just sit and watch; there’s no rehabilitation or re-entry (real, meaningful programs that actually matter). Over half of all offenders lack high school diplomas and basic job skills yet those programs – talked about all day long in here – aren’t stressed or adequately funded.

Some may argue, “Prison is about punishment not rehabilitation.” Fair enough. Then make the punishment fit the crime. Don’t run violent, drug and gang-filled facilities where corrupt officers bring in the drugs or look the other way at cases of sexual assault or stabbings and say that is the result of those locked up. No, you take a man’s – or woman’s – freedom, you bear responsibility for them. DOC has not been required to be responsible for those in its custody.

5.     Economic realities: Most of Virginia’s prisons are in rural counties. The prisons become the only significant employer in those areas. Do you ever see a private employer decide to build in Lunenburg, or Mecklenburg, or Buckingham, or Brunswick because the state puts a prison there? No. And what happens in those communities when the prison closes? Nothing but economic despair.

Prisons in those rural counties are a con job run on the locals. They think the state is “investing” in their economic future. They aren’t. Those counties, like the men and women housed in their prisons, have lousy schools and poor job opportunities. Those counties are economically as shackled and imprisoned as those behind the wire.

Truth is a casualty. It is time for an honest discussion about Virginia’s prison system. Lives – both inside and outside the walls – are being lost; money is being wasted. The truth is, one day inside here tells you things are not as those in Richmond want you to believe. The politicians, and the senior people at DOC won’t tell you the truth because it will cost them money. But, as another “philosopher” once said, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Money drives prison policy; it’s corrupt money that destroys lives. That is the truth.

Plantation Life

           The Virginia Department of Corrections is the commonwealth’s largest state agency, employing over 15,000 at a cost of over $1.2 billion a year.  It is led by a director of public safety. The DOC director, I’m guessing, provides his boss with a department “tree” detailing his own department heads and regional directors and all the prisons which fall underneath. You look at the organizational chart and you think the department is centrally run. Consistency, you tell yourself, matters. And, you’d be wrong.

            DOC operates like the antebellum South. Each prison is its own plantation; all depends on who is the warden and who is the security chief. Prison operation is a bloated business. First, it’s labor intensive. You have to have a significant number of officers to man every housing unit booth and floor. You have to have officers in the towers and in the trucks circling the perimeter. Then, there are officers on duty at vocational and treatment, and in medical and the factory. You have to have “floating” C.O.s to relieve on-duty officers twice during their twelve-hour shift. That’s just line COs. Add a layer of sergeants, “Lts” (lieutenants), two captains, and your security chief and you have a huge officer staff twenty-four, seven.

            Modern technology? Yeah, they have electronically controlled doors for the buildings, but everything else is done with keys. Every classroom door, every cabinet, every drawer, has a lock. There’s one officer whose sole job is to walk around the compound and verify that the correct key goes with the correct lock. Everything is written down; paper is everything in here.

            All that waste of money and manpower would, theoretically, be worth it if (1) society was safer; and (2) going to prison stopped a person from reoffending. Neither statement is true. In fact, just the opposite happens. There is no correlation between “tough on crime” high incarceration rates and crime rates. Want to reduce crime? Have better schools. Make sure lower income workers have a chance to reach the “American Dream” with well-paying employment opportunities and access to both health care and decent housing.

            And, going to prison doesn’t stop recidivism. It’s just the opposite. You send a low risk, non-violent offender into a prison and there’s better than a one out of three chance when they get out, they’ll break the law again. That’s prison. Even at low levels. They are zoos (perhaps zoo isn’t a fair word; zoos are much nicer). Drug use – heroin, pills, weed, you name it – is rampant. Violence is commonplace. There are health crises that brew like a toxic stew; Hep C, HIV, diabetes, not to mention staff infections (MRSA), rotten teeth, rotten skin, rotten psyches. The officers – not all, but a fair number – are corrupt. They are low-skilled, poorly paid minders who use their job to “get a little more.”

            All this goes on under the watchful eye of the warden and the chief of security, the facility major. They run the facility as they see fit, the hell with department policies or procedures. For example, DOC has specific regulations concerning facility operation. “DOPs” (department operating procedures) spell out everything from mail to visitation. And yet every facility enforces those procedures differently. Even going from one level “2” re-entry facility to another is like night and day. It all comes down to the whims and wills of the security chief. Most of the decisions that the major makes are petty and address neither safety, nor security.

            You learn which officers are straight-shooters and which ones are dirty. You watch as they create additional levels of bureaucracy which contribute nothing to the Department’s defined mission of successful re-entry of released inmates to society. Here, we have counselors who don’t counsel; they report to unit managers who worry more about the waxy shine on twenty year-old floor tiles than health and safety in the building. The three unit managers report to an  “evidence based program” manager, a fancy word for a man who should be pushing re-entry programs that matter (like real job training and drug and alcohol treatment), but instead has grown men sitting in a room every morning getting “the word of the day.”

            They have a grievance procedure in place. By law, a prison has to have a system in place that allows the incarcerated to challenge charges and arbitrary enforcement of rules (passed during the Clinton Administration to reduce the number of § 1983 Civil Rights suits flooding the federal courts by inmates). Here, the system is rigged. Due process is ignored. Officers – as uneducated as the offender population (you only need a GED to be a C.O.) – fail to meet minimum standards of evidence and fail to even correctly write charges. Still, the hearing officer almost never finds for the offender.

            All these circumstances breed a sense of victimization and contempt for the judicial system within the offender ranks. When you are in danger of being shook down or sent to the hole based on someone dropping a “note” on you; when most investigations are initiated by information provided by snitches who themselves are dirty (but their dirt is overlooked by the security apparatus), when officers are bringing in drugs and having sex with inmates and – when caught – are just “walked off” without facing prosecution, then you know it’s a rigged game. You are, to quote Bob Dylan, “workin’ on Maggie’s farm.”

            All that goes on here. And you know what – Richmond knows … they just don’t care. How else do you explain that wardens aren’t held accountable for the drug use, fights, deaths, and re-offending of those in their charge? How else do you explain majors getting inmates to wash their cars and playing favorites with snitches while limiting access to education programs?

            This isn’t a well-run department; this isn’t merely a poorly run department. This is a decentralized mismanaged rat hole where each prison runs as its own little fiefdom, its own plantation. It’s all that and it isn’t corrections. And, it doesn’t do a damn bit of good for anyone. Everyone pays for this failed antebellum plantation system: tax-payers, victims, and the families of the offenders. It is time to move corrections into the 21^st century. It’s time to clean up the prisons.

            

Mental Health

Much was made of the tragic, self-inflicted gunshot death, of Sen. Creigh Deed’s son over Thanksgiving. It once again focused attention on Virginia’s broken mental system. I have written regularly about the large number of over-medicated inmates and their “thorazine” shuffle, how prison psychiatrists write prescriptions for “cocktails” of multiple anti-psychotic meds with little or no actual treatment being offered.

      And it is even worse. Forget the long-term health concerns from poorly managed anti-psychotics; there is the lack of coherent mental health care on site that is equally appalling.

      The prison employs three women in a “psychology” office. Problem is, none are psychologists. All three have BAs in psychology but nothing further. They serve as “gatekeepers” – they make “treatment” recommendations – for the D.O.C. psychiatrist who literally is a “Doc-in-the-box.” Medicated inmates speak to the psychiatrist via videoconference for less than 5 minutes every 90 days. There is no other medical treatment except blood work (these psychotropic drugs can cause liver damage).

            The “psychologists” are quick to offer diagnosis and place an inmate in a category: bi-polar disorder; schizophrenia; depression; there is a “top ten” list and men are neatly packaged into them. But, without meaningful one-on-one care all that is done is place the men in a drugged stupor. And these labels – so easy to attach – become self-fulfilling. These labeled men then tell you they can’t “help” their behavior. They have a “disorder.” And they use the disorder as a crutch; and they believe they are entitled to disability and release from prison without addressing why they did what they did. They are lied to repeatedly about their condition and then over-medicated and under treated. They go home and fall back into the same self-destructive lifestyle. And they return.

            That isn’t mental health. Many men here have significant psychological issues. However, the answer isn’t always high doses of mind-numbing chemicals and catch all diagnoses chosen from the newest DSM like one would order off a menu. Legitimate mental health education requires one-on-one treatment and regular assessment and control of prescription medication. That doesn’t happen in here.

            Like most things involving the Virginia Department of Corrections, mental health treatment exists only as words not as a real program. The cost – to provide actual in-patient treatment – would be staggering. Instead, the men are treated like cattle at a slaughterhouse. Each night forty to forty-five of the seventy-two men I reside with line up for pill call. And they have their pills placed in small Dixie cups – Seroquel, Prozac, trazadone, thorazine, the list (and the pill colors) are endless.

            They take their pills, numb their minds, and stagger back to their bunks. Some day they will be released; but what are the ramifications for DOC’s mental health failure? What indeed.